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According to this new article on the Ajax Developer’s Journal today, IBM is spearheading a new effort to promote Ajax to developers all around the world – the “Open Ajax” Coalition.

The Open AJAX initiative does not have a centralized structure or website, but is rather an idea that is being formally backed by BEA, Borland, the Dojo Foundation, the Eclipse Foundation, Laszlo Systems, Mozilla Corporation, Novell, Openwave Systems, Oracle, Red Hat, Yahoo, Zend and Zimbra. A spokesperson for one of the major backers said that Google will also be backing this initiative.

The coalition members say they “intend to promote Ajax’s promise of universal compatibility with any computer device, application, desktop or operating system, and easy incorporation into new and existing software programs.”

The article continues on, noting capabilities of Ajax, as well as the fact that this coalition is not just “lip service”. Commitments have already been started by several of the main participants (such as IBM already contributing to the Eclipse project). There are various other quotes from notables in the community as well, including Mike Milinkovich (Eclipse), Scott Dietzen (Zimbra), and Steve Benfield (Agentis Software).

The part in the draft of the ‘AJAX Toolkit Framework’ I liked was the mention of â€œadaptors for J2EE/ JSPâ€? — leads me to believe that there will be tight integration between languages like Coldfusion and this toolkit, similar to how there is tight integration between Ruby on Rails and Prototype. I am very hopeful of this.